‘The Acorn’ has gone.

We are losing boxing royalty. The heavyweights of the 1970s arguably represented the very best the sport has seen. Great champions, fighting each other, once, twice, three times, winning, losing, drawing and confirming one another’s greatness with each battle, every war, every wonderful demonstration of this, the finest but most brutal art.

Muhammad Ali has gone, Jimmy Ellis and Jimmy Young, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Ron Lyle, Jerry Quarry have all gone and, on Thursday, September 1, 78-year-old Earnie Shavers passed away. 

Ali cast an almighty shadow over his brilliant contemporaries, and he came up with nicknames for many of them, some more acceptable than others.

Ali dubbed Shavers ‘The Acorn’ because of his bald head, but to many others, and now more than 40 years on, Earnie was known as the hardest-punching heavyweight in history. 

That is an extraordinary label for a fighter who never won The Big One, but testament to the extraordinary power Shavers had in his wrecking ball fists. 

And Shavers came close to winning the world heavyweight title. He smashed the wonderful Larry Holmes with a right hand that could have felled a skyscraper. Sure, Holmes hit the deck, but astonishingly a prime-Holmes managed to rise and fight on. Larry said Shavers had hit hard enough to knock over a mountain and that each time Earnie detonated he thought someone was taking his photo. 

Boxing News headlined their report with, ‘Iron-man Holmes shows his mettle.’

Larry was 29, Shavers was 35 and Earnie wasn’t sure he would get another chance. As Shavers battled grimly away, with Holmes dominating as the fight wore on, Larry said in the trenches, “Man, why are you hanging on?” 

“I ain’t quitting,” Shavers replied. “I’m trying to take your title away.”

So Holmes turned to referee Davey Pearl and said, “What do you want me to do, kill him?”

Pearl was later forced to explain why he had allowed Shavers, bleeding heavily and with one eye half shut, to absorb the late-round beating. 

“With his punch, there was still a chance he could kayo his man,” said Pearl. And Davey was right.

Holmes had outpointed Shavers over 12 in a title eliminator 17 months earlier but Earnie got his shot largely by blitzing Ken Norton into defeat in less than two minutes. Some called Earnie Mr Devastation after that one.

In 1977, Ali was shelled by so many hard shots from Shavers that there were plenty who felt that was the ‘one fight too far’ for Ali, that the majority of damage he exhibited later in life came from the violent Shavers clash and the four fights he had afterwards.

Boxing News called Ali-Shavers “The walkover that turned into a war,” saying Shavers had put up the fight of his life and that “It was his [Earnie’s] finest hour.”

The judges, including referee John LoBianco (9-5-1), Tony Castellano (9-6) and Eva Shain (9-6), who became the first woman to judge a world heavyweight title fight that night, were unanimous.

But Shavers should affectionately be remembered. He couldn’t just hit, he could fight. And he was more than a fighter. Stamina was not his strongest suit, as you could tell in the wild brawls and shootouts with Roy Williams, Ron Lyle and Tex Cobb, but even though he could get arm weary, he never lost his power or desire to launch historic bombs that could rewire many a great heavyweight. 

Still, it was the bombing abilities of a fresh Shavers that fighters did well to avoid, because Jimmy Young, Jimmy Ellis and Ken Norton – all top heavyweights in their own right – did not make it through the first round against Earnie. 

In Denver, in 1975, ringsiders marvelled at what they saw against Lyle and called it the best fight the city had ever seen. Only 5,000 attended because Lyle had lost two on the bounce (to Ali and Jimmy Young) and they thought he was washed up. He wasn’t, and he climbed off the floor to stop Earnie in the sixth of an epic. Shavers complained Lyle had been given an extra minute to recover between rounds two and three. Then he complained Lyle had been given a long count. The local commission denied both charges.

The 1980 Cobb fight was an underrated slugfest, which ended with Shavers a sitting duck before getting stopped, and Boxing News felt it was the end of the line for Earnie. It wasn’t.

The end would not come for another 16 years when Shavers was stopped in two rounds, at the age of 50, by 21-year-old Brian Yates on a club show in Wisconsin. There had been numerous comebacks through the 1980s and 1990s, but let’s not discuss those irrelevant fights here. Shavers was a man of the 1970s, although he did stop a come-backing Joe Bugner in two in 1982. 

When Earnie finally retired, he did so with a record of 71 wins against 14 losses and a draw, which was a split draw in a rematch with Jimmy Young that saw Young nearly bombed out early once more, only for Shavers to have to hold on near the end. Young thought he’d been robbed.

Over the years, Earnie found religion and often attended ex-boxer events, such as the International Boxing Hall of Fame weekend. He would do signings in Las Vegas, and for a period he, Leon Spinks and Ken Norton would travel together to signings on The Strip.

But Shavers wasn’t the type to just casually pose for a picture. He wanted those asking him to feel special. Often, he would grab someone’s hand, curl up their fingers so their fist was in a ball and he’d pull it on to his chin, so thousands of people can lay claim to having stuck one of the chin of the hardest punching heavyweight in history. There was no ego with Shavers. He was a man who was satisfied with what he had done and what he had achieved.

I spoke to Shavers on and off for the last 20 years. He was living in Liverpool at the start, working on the doors, then he moved back to the USA. We talked for my book, Damage, as he was one of the heavyweights who was well-preserved into old age. He put his good health down to clean living and when I asked him why the punches seemed to have not taken such a severe toll on him, he joked, “I did the punching, so it didn’t affect me.”

Years ago, Shavers was asked about his passion for boxing, and replied, “I don’t love the fight game. It’s just a means of getting security. You ever see a lion tamer who enjoys his job?” 

But Shavers was one of the lions in our sport.

Yes, he was Ali’s ‘Acorn’ but his reputation goes beyond the nickname. He was not just a heavyweight puncher, he was the heavyweight puncher, and that is a fearsome legacy to have left behind.